Lo rossinhols s'esbaudeya

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GLOSSATOR 4 the lover plans to use with his lady the same strategy that he would use with Love, as they behave similarly. The listener might have the impression that both characters have become interchangeable within poetic fiction. Verses about the lady and about Love are interspersed because the actions of both characters are assimilated. STANZA 7 The lover ends up surrendering to Love and declaring that he will continue serving his lady. The justification for his decision deserves some attention, though: he believes that giving up this affair would mean wasting all the effort he has put into it. The struggle for love is seen as an investment that should not be thrown away. After the criticism of the lady’s actions by the lover, it is likely that the audience would interpret these words as a display of cynicism. Love service is a long term enterprise that must earn the lover some compensation for the pain he has endured. The stanza closes with declarations of love for the lady, and the lover expresses his desire of submitting himself to her. These verses culminate the shift in discourse’s direction beginning with the first stanza: at the start of the song, the poetic voice declared that he was not in love; as we read on, the characters of Love and the lady appear, and the lover finds an opportunity to blame both for their behaviour. The fact that blame is shared between Love and the lady shields her from receiving all the criticism for her actions. Although the song ends with the conventional expressions of fidelity and submission, the composition as a whole displays original and witty strategies for presenting the usual topics in a new light, surprising the audience, and breaking the oneness of poetic discourse by intertwining positive and negative aspects of the lady. In the previous pages we had an opportunity to demonstrate that lyric motifs used by Bernart de Ventadorn in mid-twelfth century were inherited by Catalan and Valencian poets, and still resonant three centuries later. Although Pere Torroella, Joan Berenguer de Masdovelles, Joan Roís de Corella and other poets rendered a faithful reworking of the classical themes, their choice of the materials to be revisited was far from unselective. The disparagement of courtly conventions and the negative depiction of the lady’s features are in keeping with the historical context of the late-medieval crown of Aragon. The pessimistic view on the classical courtly topics mirrors the anxiety of Aragonese nobility 112
CODERCH – LO ROSSINHOLS S’ESBAUDEYA facing the emergence of trade and bourgeois families. The prospect of losing the privileges traditionally reserved to the knightly elite throws a gloomy patina on the old courtly code, revealing its inefficiency to obtain prestige in a world increasingly driven by monetary interests (as Torroella’s poem shows). Thus, the commentary on the transmission of the classical troubadour heritage to Catalan and Valencian poets of the late Middle Ages allows us to grasp the spirit of a crucial period in Western history, when the forces anticipating modern European societies called into question the old aristocratic values. REFERENCES Aramon i Serra, Ramon, ed. Cançoner dels Masdovelles (Manuscrit n. 11 de la Biblioteca de Catalunya). Cançoners Catalans de la Biblioteca de Catalunya 1. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans / Biblioteca de Catalunya, 1938. Bernart de Ventadorn. The Songs of Bernart de Ventadorn (Complete Text, Translations, Notes, and Glossary). Edited by Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1962. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Coderch, Marion. Ausiàs March, les dones i l’amor. València: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2009. Gaucelm Faidit. Les poèmes de Gaucelm Faidit, troubadour du XIIe siècle. Edited by Jean Mouzat. Paris: Nizet, 1965. Gilabert de Próixita. Poesies. Edited by Martí de Riquer. Els Nostres Clàssics A 76. Barcelona: Barcino, 1954. Gouiran, Gérard. “Du bon usage de l’hérésie en fin’amor chez Bernart de Ventadorn.” Revue des Langues Romanes 100 (1996): 1-16. Pillet, Alfred, and Henry Carstens. Bibliographie der Troubadours. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1933. Roís de Corella, Joan. Obra profana. Edited by Jordi Carbonell. La Unitat 74. València: Eliseu Climent, 1983. Torroella, Pere. Obra completa. Edited by Robert Archer. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2004. 113
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